And if that’s not enough, here’s more…
Bruce Price: Polyphony
Nick Ryan Gallery, 1221 Pennsylvania Avenue, Boulder
Thursday, May 16, through June 22
Grand Opening/Opening Reception: Thursday, May 16, 6 to 9 p.m.
Artist Talk: Saturday, June 15, noon
Longtime William Havu Gallery manager and art consultant Nick Ryan is embarking on an adventure as a gallerist at his new Nick Ryan Gallery, which opens this week on the Hill in Boulder. He’s done well to start off with a show by Bruce Price, a fine artist (and music lover) whose work isn’t seen in commercial galleries often, by design. The show is called Polyphony, suggesting an interest in Paul Klee’s experimentation in applying the musical term of polyphony — or two or more differing melodies that interact in counterpoint — to abstract art, trading notes for colors and shapes. Price’s elegant and active compositions make their own kind of good vibrations in juxtaposed and sometimes collaged patterns and shapes, or in overlapping crescents of contrasting colors he calls “waveforms.”
Black Cube, Rachel Hayes: Horizon Drift
Plaza of the Americas, 1550 Wewatta Street
Thursday, May 16, through October 27
Opening Reception: Thursday, May 16, 5 to 7 p.m.
Party on the Plaza: Friday, May 17, 4 to 9 p.m.
Black Cube brings a new installation, Horizon Drift, by Rachel Hayes, to the Plaza of the Americas near Union Station as part of the 2024 Biennial of the Americas. Hayes pieced together large textile shapes to form a giant canopy of interlocking blocks of color, inspired by a sunrise she encountered during a flight from Tulsa to Denver. Hayes’s piece will fly overhead in the breeze during an opening reception on Thursday, May 16, as well as at an all-ages Party on the Plaza celebration on Friday, May 17, with a Taste of the Americas food fair and live performances. Keep your eye on the Biennial event calendar here for future events.
Eric Joseph Laurson, “Blue Beauty,” 2024, acrylic on canvas panel.
Eric Joseph Laurson, Unchained Voices
Canyon Gallery, Boulder Public Library, 1001 Arapahoe Avenue, Boulder
Thursday, May 16, through June 22
Closing Reception: Saturday, June 22, 1 to 4 p.m.
The annual exhibition Unchained Voices, a display of art created by talented incarcerated artists in state correctional facilities, opens this weekend at the Boulder Public Library’s Canyon Gallery. Most works on the walls (and others published in an online gallery) can be purchased any time and picked up at the library during a reception on closing day, Saturday, June 22, or on a late June date to be determined on the University of Denver campus. Shipping is also available with a shipping and handling charge.
Melana Bontrager, “Escape to Wander,” 2024, graphite and acrylic on panel.
Melana Bontrager, Walker Fine Art
Walker Fine Art, 300 West Eleventh Avenue, #A
Friday, May 17, through July 13
Opening Reception: Friday, May 17, 5 to 8 p.m., and Saturday, May 18, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Walker Fine Art’s newest group show, Portals, is a collection of art by six artists who challenge viewers to access the all-too-human inner sense of wonder we keep under wraps most of the time. Get immersed in Melana Bontrager’s translucid color-blocked landscapes and Aaron Morgan Brown’s photorealist storybooks, along with curvy metal sculptures by Caprice Pierucci, Ana Žanić’s liquid, organic watercolored minutiae, Melanie Grein’s gossamer, textured mixed-media abstracts grounded by perspective, and Sharon Strasburg’s monotype landscapes.
Jennifer Wilson, “The Reader.”
Jennifer Wilson
NKollectiv, 960 Santa Fe Drive
Friday, May 17, through June 9
Opening Reception: Friday, May 17, 6 to 9 p.m.
NKollectiv invited seventeen local artists who work with encaustic, a process-intensive medium using melted and pigmented wax — often beeswax — that can be poured, brushed, shaped and textured as it hardens, hence the show title, Apis Opus. The resulting exhibition, mainly of abstract compositions, explores the endless possibilities of encaustic as a tool connecting paintings and sculptural surfaces.
Emily Zeek and Superior Iron Works, Moved by Metal Project
Art District on Santa Fe Studio and Headquarters, 858 Santa Fe Drive
Installation Celebration: Friday, May 17, 6 to 9 p.m.
City-funded public-sculpture projects can serve more than one function, and the Moved by Metal Project in the Art District on Santa Fe, where two new sculptural bike racks were created by two different teams, fills the bill by providing visual interest and serving a purpose at the same time. Both also add symbolic meaning to the district: Inspiration for Zia Kokopelli, created by Superior Iron Works, is rooted in Navajo culture by blending the Kokopelli figure, a trickster symbolic of fertility, the harvest and music, with the Zia sun symbol, which acknowledges the four directions, while artist Emily Zeek’s saguaro cactus bike rack is linked to the idea of longevity and transformative experiences.
The ADSF invites the public to help celebrate the bike rack installations, courtesy of Denver’s P.S. You Are Here grant program. Meet the artists at ADSF headquarters (see above) and visit the sculptures — or chain up — at the intersections of Eighth and Ninth avenues on Santa Fe Drive.
Alexandra Sheremet, Tonal Adjectives
Naked Ray Gallery, 811 28th Street
Opening Reception: Friday, May 17, 4 to 8 p.m.
Open only since March, the Naked Ray Gallery, created in RiNo by artists Ray Carney and Matilda Marginal, is already on its third exhibition. Tonal Adjectives, a selection of cyanotypes by photographer-around-town Alexandra Sheremet, opens Friday, May 17, offering a nice introduction to the new art space if you haven't been.
Evans School Spring Art Market/RedLine Gala Art Sale
Evans School, 1115 Acoma Street
Saturday, May 18, noon to 6 p.m.
It’s another twofer at the Evans School on Saturday, when the monthly Evans School Spring Art Market returns with open studios, neu folk gallery’s latest show and original art for sale throughout the building. In addition, RedLine’s fundraising art sale, which started last month, is back and open not only this weekend, but also on Tuesdays and Fridays from noon to 5 p.m., through June 2. It’s located in Evans School’s famous boiler room, which will close its doors after the show in preparation for building renovations. Be there or be square.
Yard Work
97 Newland Court, Lakewood
Saturday, May 18, 5 to 10 p.m.
Also back for another round, the monthly Yard Work backyard pop-up exhibition returns, with twenty participating artists, live music by Ben Nicholson and mini golf provided by RMCAD students. The lineup is promising; if nothing else, it's a swell party!
Foothills Art Center Creative Campus Open House
809 Fifteenth Street, Golden
Saturday, May 18, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Free, RSVP here
Foothills is ending its year-long closure to create a new Creative Campus and the two-year expansion project at Golden’s historic Astor House, which opens this month as the center’s new exhibition and performance space. And it’s good news all around, as visitors will be able to see at Saturday’s public Creative Campus grand opening (an event for FAC members is scheduled for Friday, May 17; RSVP here). FAC's original space at Washington Avenue and Fifteenth Street in Golden has been renovated to house classrooms, a ceramics studio and artist studios for rent; next weekend, visit the Astor House to see three brand-new art exhibitions (more info coming).
Annual Youth Art Exhibition
RedLine Contemporary Art Center, 2350 Arapahoe Street
Friday, May 17, to June 16
Opening Reception: Friday, May 17, 5 to 8 p.m.
RedLine Contemporary Art Center has been reaching out to more and more different underserved sectors of the Denver community with tailored tracks since opening its doors in 2008, including its one-on-one Youth Art Mentoring program for kids in grades four through twelve, and the EPIC Arts program in K-12 schools. Now see the results in an exhibition just for youth artists.
Littleton Fine Arts Guild, 40th Best of Colorado
Depot Art Gallery, 2069 West Powers Avenue, Littleton
Tuesday, May 21, through July 6
Opening Reception, Friday, May 31, 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.
For lovers of traditional art, Littleton’s Depot Art Gallery, the headquarters and exhibition space for members of the Littleton Arts Guild, celebrates its fortieth Best of Colorado juried art show debut this weekend, with a reception following on May 31. Illustrator Eriq Hochuli, curator at Golden’s Foothills Art Center, served as the show’s juror.
Vanity Set, c. 1929, manufactured by Tiffin Glass Company, Tiffin, OH, glass.
Kirkland Museum of Fine & Decorative Art
Kirkland Museum of Fine & Decorative Art, 1201 Bannock Street
Wednesday, May 22, through January 12, 2025
Member Preview: Tuesday, May 21, 4 to 7 p.m.
Public Opening Day: Wednesday, May 22, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
The Kirkland, fresh off inking a partnership to become a curatorial department for the Denver Art Museum, unveils its newest show, Vanity & Vice: American Art Deco Exhibition, a magnificent collection of objects focused on elegant design standards developed in the years between 1920 and 1933 under the Art Deco banner. In the meantime, Kirkland members should be able to visit the DAM free as early as June, with some 30,000 DAM members reciprocating in the fall. That kind of staggering exposure to new eyes can only be a boon for the Kirkland.
Interested in having your event appear in this calendar? Send the details to [email protected].
